A Day in the Life

When I say, "Time to Change", I am referring to the new national anti-stigma campaign going on in the UK at the moment. Many of you may have not heard of it, but there have been adverts on TV, and indeed, millions of pounds is being spent on this attempt to reduce the stigma surrounding mental ill health. The campaign has also been endorsed by celebrities who have themselves experienced mental ill health, from Stephen Fry to Ruby Wax and even Alistair Campbell (yuk!). Only recently the campaign put two new films on its internet sight dealing with the misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding schizophrenic illness. And here, obviously, is where things began to get a little sticky. One mention of "that word" and it seems many begin to get the heebie jeebies . The veil comes down, the stereotypes kick in, and people are generally scared to death. The films themselves actually try to deal with these fears though, and defuse them. In the first film, it starts l...

Unfortunately I have some very sad news to relay in this blog. A member of The Pathways Group, the team behind the making of our short film, "The Search" (see my posts entitled "Hollywood Here I Come" parts 1,2 and 3) has tragically passed away. His name was Matthew John Aitken, known to us and to his many friends simply as "Matt". He was only 37 years old at the time of his death. The reasons for his abrupt and shocking departure from us are not fully known to me, so I shall not speculate, other than to say Matt lived life, despite his diagnosis of mental ill health, to the full. His many interests included an abiding love of rock music, particularly the heavy metal variety, and he seemed to constantly be attending gigs where his favourite bands would play. Indeed, with his appearance of long hair pulled back into a pony tail and his many piercings and tattoos, you could say that Matt looked for all the world like a rock star. In fact, I think at one po...

" Initially when a person realises that they have been identified as psychotic and therefore different to others, a sense of loss of one's normality follows. This can feel very threatening. Cast as psychotic one has entered a taboo identity in Western society, with connotations of being socially, morally and genetically inferior. A real sense of social failure and despair can set in... Consequently, there may be a period of time when one has to mourn the loss of a former identity and reassess one's expectations and values." - Rufus May. When I first became ill, many of my friends reacted in unexpected ways. One of them was to tell me that my life was over. Indeed, I remember the conversation that we had on that night, what must now be nearly twenty years ago, but remains as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. "My God!", he said, "your life's over , Dave. What is there out there for you now?" The truth was many years of illness. But at th...

The other day at MAGMH we were discussing self or internalised stigma. This is what happens when one's past experience of stigma or, indeed, anticipation of the future experience of it, actually stops those who have experienced mental ill health from doing things which would have been a normal part of their lives, e.g. applying for jobs or attempting to forge new relationships. According to Graham Thornicroft's book, "Shunned", this is a very common trait amongst those with mental ill health and , indeed, one which is not helped by the mental health system itself. Professor Thornicroft points out that some of the things which would make service users feel better is having some form of control in managing their illnesses, being treated with respect, and finally, not feeling powerless in the face of the seemingly all-knowing psychiatrist. Unfortunately, his book suggests that in all of these areas the system is sadly lacking, with many service users reporting experie...

Over at MAGMH we have just started our "Local People, Local Lives" campaign, a new and innovative campaign which seeks not only to bring about a change in attitudes to mental ill health amongst the population of Stoke-on-Trent, but also to enlist and empower volunteers by making and distributing various anti-stigma materials. The campaign will, perhaps, not be like the already existing "Time to Change" in that we will be using new "social marketing" techniques to get our messages across. That is to say our messages will be more subtly conveyed and less direct. I could, for example, talk about my love of cinema, only bringing in an anti-stigma message later in the piece. So, that is exactly what I am going to do here. Indeed, I am what you might call a " cinephile ". Once again, I must point out, that this term has nothing to do with the molestation of the young, the suffix " phile " merely, in this instance, referring to a lover of fi...

As a user of mental health services and volunteer, I have now been involved with The Media Action Group for Mental Health for around two years. My involvement with them, I believe, has allowed me to work through a number of personal issues related to stigma. Although when I started working for MAGMH , many people (my dad mostly, I think) thought that I was an "angry young man", I now find that I am infinitely more sanguine about my own situation and of the whole predicament regarding stigma. Indeed, as MAGMH themselves might point out, their organisation is not one which is intended as a voice for personal anger against so-called discriminators. One is, on the other hand, invited to channel such feelings into a determined and defined effort to combat stigma in constructive or non- aggressive ways. At MAGMH we all seem to agree that being angry is a phase, a moment to go through, a necessary coping mechanism for acknowledging the sort of unusual grief and loss that mental i...

I know I tend to go on alot about how I get bored, bored, bored in this blog. I generally, in the past, put these feelings of ennui down to having experienced a mental health problem which, in many ways, has left me somewhat socially isolated. I am often on my own for large spans of time and, almost without fail, find myself bored. I have been known to fall asleep out of sheer apathy and lack of motivation. Before, again, I have perhaps put this down to "negative" symptoms of the illness from which I am told I suffer, but lately I have been wondering whether this boredom thing goes a little deeper and is perhaps the product of a society which expects us all to be overwhelmingly conformist in our natures. I believe I feel this more acutely than perhaps other people do because I have been, at some point, at a stage where my behaviour certainly didn't conform to the "norm". It was deemed inappropriate, unreasonable- "mad". To use a literary allusion to e...